Wednesday, January 20, 2010

More on the Order of Thoth Part II

Continued from Part I

Next is the history section. Opinion is very divided about how much history to provide players. My goal is to give enough history to establish enough of the context in which the Order of Thoth exists to aid roleplaying a Thothian Mage.

The Ancient Past section estabilshes that the Order of Thoth arose out of Ghinorian Culture and why so much of the Order of Thoth is dominated by Ghinorians.

The story about the rise of the Order has two purposes. First it explains why the order was founded. The importance of the Code of Thoth to the order and the importance of the secret of the Shield of Magic.

Second it establishes that the Order of Thoth is an offshoot of Ghinorian Culture. This helps the player understand the hostility the Order experiences in lands dominated by Ghinorian Culture. This is reinforced by the first quote back at the beginning of the document.

The Early days of the Order further reinforces the Ghinorian centric nature of the Order and also gives the fact that while dominated by the Ghinorians there are many other cultures represented.

The second paragraph gives important background details about the Tula the City of Wizards. It also the first detail that may impact the player's roleplaying of his character. At some point he may decide to adventure to Tula and see what it has to offer his character.

The Grand Conclave give details on the most important institution of the Order. It also established that the Order is not into maintaining a strict hierarchy of mages. In the original all mage campaign that spawned much of this detail a lot the terms of Ars Magica was used. However in practice the campaign revolved around the problems and issues of one conclave, the Guild of Arcane Lore in City-State. The other conclaves played little part in the roleplaying or plot of the campaign. To get away from Ars Magica to my own original work I jettisoned the complex hierarchy of Ars Magica and substituted a more conclave centric vision.

Bat in the Attic Games

How to make a Sandbox

The Old School Renaissance

To me the Old School Renaissance is not about playing a particular set of rules in a particular way, the dungeon crawl. It is about going back to the roots of our hobby and seeing what we could do differently. What avenues were not explored because of the commercial and personal interests of the game designers of the time.

What are RPGs?

A game where the players play individual characters interacting with a setting with their actions adjudicated by a human referee.

Rules are an aide to help the referee adjudicate actions and to help the players interact with the setting.

Dice are used to inject uncertainty which make a tabletop RPG campaign more interesting than "Let's Pretend".

The only thing a player needs to do to roleplay a character is to act if he or she was really there in the setting in that situation.